Never open the door in the dark
by Ophium
Summary: Halloween story. John and Sam are out, hunting. Dean, recently blinded in an accident, is left out of the hunt. The hunted thing, however, has other plans. Warnings for language. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Never open the door in the dark**

The sound of someone knocking on the door startled Dean from his light sleep. Listening to the TV when you couldn't actually see the images that went with each sound was quite boring and it wasn't like he could do much else but lie in bed or sit on the chair by the table.

The motel room had a kitchen, but after the 'cabinet incident', John had declared that whole area off limits for Dean. Not that he could find it again, not without the noises of dishes and pots to guide him back.

The only way he could manage to find the bathroom with relative ease was because of the faulty faucet that kept a steady pingpingping! Any other time, that would've annoyed the crap out of him to the point of taking the whole thing apart, but now that Dean found himself... handicapped, it came in quite handy.

Sam had been fussing all over him since it had happened. Nobody's fault but his own, Dean knew that, but there was no helping the guilty sighs on his brother part and the deep breaths dad kept taking whenever Dean bumped into one more thing left out of place in the room.

It wasn't permanent, they had assured them that. Two weeks, the doc had said. Two weeks with his eyes covered from all types of light while his burned corneas healed.

The knock came back with a vengeance and Dean remembered what had roused him up in the first place. The stupid door.

"Wait a frigging minute, will ya?"

Now... the door was to the left of his bed, Dean remembered that too. He just needed to find the edges of the extra bed, go around it and then it was just a matter of making those five steps across the void.

Dean hated the void.

He'd never been one to be afraid of the dark. Being afraid of the dark was for people who didn't know how to fight the things that lived there. Dean knew. His dad had taught him how.

But now...

When he had awakened in the hospital, his face in utter agony and his world plunged into darkness, Dean had to confess that he had lost it. A little bit.

Enough to punch the first person that had touched him.

Which had turned out to be his father.

The fact that John had hugged him tight instead of ripping Dean a new one for punching him was enough to tell Dean how serious it was.

Well, that and the blindness.

The doctor had come to explain later. Apparently, it was a bad thing to be too close to a flare when it explodes in your hands. Besides the slightly singed fingers, the eyes were kind of partial to not having extra-bright lights and heat that close to them. Wusses.

He would recover, but for all intent and purpose, Dean was blind for two weeks. At the time, it had seemed to Dean like a small price to pay for his clumsiness... until he had bumped into his first obstacle.

The knocking became more insistent, urgent.

"Hold your horses, I said I'm coming!" Dean blared at the insistent knocking.

The manager, it could only be the manager. The man was a dick that had extorted his father for extra money for a room on the ground level, even though the whole place was barely occupied. One look at Dean's face, standing by the door, with the bandage wrapped around his eyes and the band aids on his hands and the man had seen an opportunity to earn a few extra bucks on the needs of others. Dean hadn't seen it, but he could easily hear the sleaziness in the man's voice when he had explained to John why he was paying for a special 'handicap fee'.

Dean hoped his dad punched the man in the face before they checked out. Or Dean could it himself, as soon as he opened the door.

Sam and his father were out. All Hallows Eve was all fun and candy for kids and suburbia moms, but for hunters, it was the busiest night of the year. Even with a man down, John had been forced out to hunt a skinwalker that had been prowling the area.

Dean had begged to come along, promised to stay in the car, to behave himself and help as far as he could; but his pleas had fallen on deaf ears.

John had remained firm, adamant about not taking Dean with him.

The message was clear to Dean; in his current condition, Dean was useless to him, and worse still, he was a liability. His father hadn't flat out said it in so many words, but Dean could still hear it in John's voice. So, he had taken Sam instead, whom despite being only twelve and still inexperienced as far as hunting, could at least see where to point his gun and shoot.

Dean flung the door open in frustration, wanting nothing more than to send the annoying man away and go back to his bed... if he could find it again.

"What?"

It was chilly outside, the end of October bringing with it the first rain of the winter. The dogs were barking at a distance. A car drove by on the wet road.

"I know you didn't just knocked to look at my face, so... what do you want?" Dean insisted. The feeling of anger at his lack of usefulness was slowly crawling behind the iciness that was spreading from his stomach out. "If you want more money, you'll ha—"

Dean stopped himself. Something was wrong. Despite the fact that he was still a few months short of seventeen, Dean had been hunting for long enough to trust the odd feelings around him. And right then, his gut was telling him that something was very, very wrong.

Not caring if there really was someone at the door, or of it was just some creep staring at a blind kid, Dean shoved the door closed and quickly knelt down.

His father had made sure that there were salt bags near the windows and doors and had guided Dean on a tour through all of them. Dean was grateful for that as his right hand collided with one and he quickly spread its contents against the door.

Dean breathed in relief. Maybe he was just being paranoid; maybe it was the darkness he was trapped in that was making him act like a scared kid. Either way, it was better to be safe than sorry, his dad always said.

The puff of air against his neck told Dean that being safe was no longer an option.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Dean scrambled on all fours until his back hit the door. He'd been too late. There was something in the room with him.

He tried to remember where his father had left his bag with the extra weapons, but his mind was drawing up a blank. John had never said where and, although the room wasn't all that big, Dean had no time to be palming his way around in search for something sharp.

Besides, he had no idea_ what_ it was.

Dean's first guess was that it could be some sort of pervert. Dean was young, but he wasn't stupid; or bli—well, he was blind _now_ but he could see perfectly well before, when dad dropped him and Sam in skivviest places where the lower scum of mankind liked to prowl. He saw the way some 'people' looked at him and Sam.

A pervert. Dean could only _hope_ it was a pervert, because a pervert was still a human, and even blind, Dean could handle humans, no problem. But with his luck, that would be asking too much.

No, whatever this thing was, it had passed right through him at the door and Dean hadn't even noticed. There was no way it could've come in any other way; all the remaining exit points were salted.

Unless it was something that was immune to salt.

Dean was getting ready to rack his brain, to try and figure out what this thing could possibly be when he realized that other than the breath of air on his back, nothing else was happening.

He ran his hands through his hair, distantly noting that it was getting too long, and tried to calm down, think clearly. Why would something supernatural walk into their motel room and then do _nothing_?

Dean's fingers touched the bandage covering his eyes, longing to take it off and take a look at the room. He needed to be sure. Maybe he had imagined the puff of air; maybe it had been nothing more than a glitch in the air conditioner.

Slowly, Dean rose to his feet. He expected something to jump at him with every painful inch that he moved up, but nothing happened. His heart was beating wildly inside his chest and an incomprehensible desire for his father to return was taking over him.

He shook his head, wincing at the dull pain it awaken in his eyes. He was being a baby, Dean knew that. Freaking over what was probably nothing.

With one arm stretched out in front of him and his sock-covered toes treading carefully on the floor ahead, Dean started to make his way back, slowly, in search of the foot of the bed.

The knock on the door raised the hair at the back of his neck.

Dean stood frozen, in the middle of the empty motel room, completely lost on what he was supposed to do. He could pretend that there was no one in the room, but he had just opened the door a few minutes before. Besides, the TV was still working in the background and he had no idea if Sam or dad had turned off the lights before leaving.

Taking a deep breath that came out shakier than Dean would ever admit to anyone, he spun around and headed back to the door.

"Who is it?" Dean voiced, the side of his face glued against the wooden door, searching for any clue about who was on the other side.

"Trick or treat!" A group of childish voices answered him.

Dean took a step back. Who the hell came to 'trick or treat' at a motel? Then again, from what he had seen of the place before the flare incident, the town was too small for the kids to pass on the opportunity for the extra candy from visitors.

"Sorry kids," Dean yelled at the closed door, "no candy here. Try next door."

The next sound on the other side of the door was clearly not made by child-size hands, but rather child-size boots, banging against the wood. Dean frowned for a second before busting the door open and jumping outside to tear those rude kids a new one. "HEY! Cut out that shi—"

There was no one there. Dean couldn't see anything but intense black, but he _knew_ there was no one there. There had been no sharp intake of breath from scared kids, no scuffing on the wet floor of running feet, nothing. Just dead, empty, chilly air.

Dean took a step back, fingers extended and reaching for the safety of the familiar door. His index finger bumped into the doorknob sooner than he had expected. He turned around in a movement so fast that it left him dizzy.

The doorknob shouldn't be there. At all.

The door opened inside, towards the room. Dean had barely neared the threshold of the door.

With trembling fingers, Dean let go of the knob and flattened his hands against the cold wood of the door.

It was closed.

The door was closed and he had been left on the outside.


	3. Chapter 3

No key. He had no key to get in. Skeevy motel manager had said that room keys were handed over to adults only and with two teenager boys with him, John was only entitled to one. Which he had taken with him when he had left with Sam.

Dean hadn't paid that much attention to it at the time. After all, where the hell could he go that he would need a key to get back into the room?

'Outside, chasing imaginary 'trick or treating kids', Dean's brain supplied.

The urge to rip the bandage off his eyes returned with a renewed strength, this time quickly followed by a desire to find a good sized stone and use it to break a window and get back into the room. Strangely as it sounded, that room where he had been for less than three days, was the closest thing to a safe place that Dean could think of.

And he felt kind of stupid, just staying there and waiting for his dad to come back, like a small kid who can't tie his own frigging shoelaces. Besides, it was getting kind of cold and all he had on was a cotton t-shirt, a ratty pair of jeans and grey socks that had a hole in them, something that Dean had recently found out when he had set his right foot on the wet ground.

For a few seconds, Dean entertained the thought of knocking on a random door and asking for help. He quickly discarded that idea.

The type of people who stayed in that sort of place weren't always the most dependable and, between the cold weather or having his kidneys sold on the black market or worse, Dean decided that he was way better off in the rain.

His only other choice was to try and find out where the manager's office was and ask the man to open the door for him. The manager, however, gave Dean's skin the hives and, for the moment, he figured that he'd rather freeze to death outside than owe that man anything. Hell, he was willing to even take his chances with the kidney-ppers next door.

The hot puff of air hit Dean right in his face.

Dean flinched back, a muttered curse escaping his lips. Deciding that enough was enough and that the risk of losing his whole arm was better than to let this thing keep on_ playing_ with him, Dean threw a punch straight ahead.

He hit nothing but dead air.

"Stop fucking around with me!" Dean let out in anger. He wasn't going to admit to the frustration of feeling like he wasn't good enough to beat whatever this thing was, or the fear that was building inside of him that, without his father there, Dean was in deep trouble.

He wasn't some little kid who needed his parents to hold his hand in the dark. He was Dean frigging Winchester and he was hell-bent on making his father's name proud...

... which all sounded very high and mighty in Dean's head but didn't changed the fact that he was alone in the cold and rainy street and that there was an unknown _something_ that he couldn't see, prowling on him.

Dean bit down on his lip when he felt something move around his personal space, a presence that, somehow, didn't feel solid enough for him to land a punch.

He tried anyway.

His fist, flying aimlessly through the air, hit something metallic. And definitely solid.

Dean let out a pained yelped, feeling the jolt of the impact all the way up to his elbow. He'd hit one of the cars in the parking lot. It could only be that.

Dean had no idea that he had wondered so far away from the room's door. He turned around, slowly trying to determine which way the room stood, but everything was silent, not even a car driving by in the interstate nearby to tell him which way was the road.

"Fuck!" Dean let out, holding his throbbing hand closer to his chest. His shirt was soaking wet, but he could no longer tell if that was from the cold sweat running down his chest or from the rain he could feel falling on his face.

He needed a defensible position. Whatever this thing was –and Dean refused to believe that it was all in his head- whatever it was, it seemed more interested in playing with him than actually killing him, something that Dean was sure he should be grateful for. But Thanksgiving was still a good couple of weeks away... and Dean wasn't feeling particularly grateful for anything in his current situation.

Every fiber in Dean's body wanted nothing more than to just huddle close to the door of their room and wait for Sam and his father to come home and make this right. But he knew that was the same as a death sentence.

This thing might have seem content with toying around with him so far, but there was no telling what it was going to do next.

Keeping his injured right hand close to his chest, Dean fumbled around with his left until he found the top of the car he had punched. It was just his luck that he'd hit the one without any alarm system.

For a moment, he thought about trying the door handle and see if he could get inside that car. Bleak visions of the car owner arriving and calling the cops on Dean, quickly followed by Child Protective Services falling on their collective asses like vultures were enough to stop Dean cold. He needed to find shelter some place else.

Moving around slowly Dean picked a direction at random and moved forward. True, from the car's position he could tell the motel's side and the road side –assuming that the guy had parked his car perpendicularly like normal people tend to do- but he had no idea which was which. He had a fifty-fifty chance of walking back to the balcony that ran the expanse of the motel's rooms.

The adrenaline pumping through him was robbing Dean of whatever warmth he had managed to preserve since leaving the room, and five steps into the void, Dean begun shivering.

_"No where to run."_

The voice sounded like running water, gurgling in the very bottom of a deep well. Not male, not exactly female either. It sounded like something that should be dead, like something that was _death_. And close, too close to Dean's skin.

Dean flinched back, stumbled on something that went rolling away in the wet gravel. A can of soda, for all he knew. It still left his big toe throbbing.

"Get the fuck away from me"

Dean kept on moving, faster now, desperate to put something solid to cover his back to and face whatever this thing was from one direction only. As it was now, it felt like his world was caving in from all sides and there was no safety handle to hold on to.

_"No where to hide."_

Dean started to run, even though he had no idea where he was going or what was in front of him. He ran and hoped that the thing whispering in his ear, sending slivers of fear and despair up and down his spine, stayed behind, stayed far enough so that Dean wouldn't have to hear it ever again.

_"No where to go."_

Dean heard the screeching of tires almost at the same time as he felt the pain in his legs. And then the blackness of what he couldn't see slowly became the blackness of not feeling anything at all.


	4. Chapter 4

"What the hell were you thinking?"

There was a background rush of cold water running inside of Dean's brain and for a moment, the words barely registered for what they meant. All he could be sure of was that it had been his father's voice and that he had sound beyond pissed.

"Dad." Sam. Gentler but still carrying a thousand warnings in a single word. "You promised you wouldn't... he's not even awake yet. The doctor said the anesthetic would take a bit to wear off."

In contrast with the anger in his father's tone, Sam's voice was tremulous, either on the verge of tears or actually crying. Dean still couldn't see it either way.

Dean tried raising one of his hands, to let his family know that he was awake, but the effort to raise either one made it feel like an impossible task. And his right one hurt like a bitch, for some reason. He decided to give sound a go, since action was taking just too long.

"Wha—" Dean tried, only to find that his mouth was so dry that his gums had glued to the inside of his cheeks. "Wha'appen?"

A deep sigh on John's part and Dean knew that his father was actually trying to keep his emotions in check.

"That is what we would like to hear, Dean," John said, quietly, voice deceptively calm even if the order was loud and clear. "What were you doing in the middle of the road, running around in your pjs like some escapee from the loony bin?"

The accusation in his father's words was so clear that Dean almost missed the straw that Sam was clumsily trying to press against his lips. He fumbled around until the plastic tube was trapped between his teeth and sucked the cold water that he knew would be on the other end. Sam's small hand, hot around the cup and under Dean's, was trembling with concern and something else that Dean couldn't quite place. "Thanks, Sammy."

Dean could only imagine his father's face, dark eyes narrowed into slits, thin lips set in a determinate line, blue vein pulsing on the right side of his forehead. He had no idea how to explain what had happened to him, mainly because Dean himself was missing some important pieces.

Dean could tell that they were in a hospital, or some clinic. Someplace where disinfectant and ether were the 'perfumes' of choice and where, despite the general request for silence, at least ten different conversations could be heard in the background, muffled noise.

He also knew that he was bruised all over and that his left leg was broken. It didn't hurt all that much, but he could feel that fake numbness and extra heaviness that came from both the painkillers and the plaster covering his injured limb.

Dean could remember the thing that had been chasing him down the parking lot, apparently towards the road, where he'd been hit by—

"I was run over?" Dean ventured, even though what he really felt like asking was if his dad had killed the thing that had been hunting Dean, even if it that was nothing more than a childish wish to have his father make everything better despite the fact that John had no way of knowing what was actually wrong.

The silence that settled over the room in the wake of Dean's question could mean so many things that Dean felt his heart racing in anxiety. It didn't help that he was hooked up to the heart monitor and everyone else could hear it too.

"Dad hit you," Sam's voice was almost a whisper, and if he weren't sitting in the bed next to Dean's unbroken leg, he wouldn't have been able to understand his words.

"Wha—"

"You ran in front of the frigging Impala, Dean! Just when I was arriving at the motel... I had no time to-" John cut in, now that his youngest had already let the cat out of the bag. It hurt more to hear the guilt in his father's voice than it had to hear the accusation. "I thought I'd killed you, son."

Dean tried to sit up straighter in his bed. His father shouldn't be feeling guilty. It was that thing's fault that Dean was out of the room; it was Dean's fault that he had lost track of which direction he was going and that he had end up on the road. It wasn't dad's fault.

After all, what kind of hunter could Dean ever aspire to be if he couldn't even keep his frigging north?

Dean felt his father's large hands on his shoulders, easing his way up and setting the pillows behind his back to support him.

"Child Services have already been alerted," his father went on, his voice still strained. Contained.

Dean could hear what John wasn't saying. They had called attention to themselves; _Dean_ had called attention to their family, with his clumsy handling of the flare and now running in front of his father's car. Too many 'accidents' in less than a week. That sort of thing was bound to put them on the Child Protection's radar. They had to leave. Now.

"I'm good to go," Dean said, hoping that his face showed a stronger resolution than his shaky voice did. He was sore all over, he was sick and tired of having to guess his family's moods from the tone of their voices and, deep down, he wanted nothing more than to put as much distance as he could between himself and the thing that had chased him down at the motel.

"_You sure about that, champ?"_

Dean froze. He could feel Sam's knee, bumping against his good leg on the bed; he could feel his father's hand still messing with the pillows and already disconnecting leads from the above head monitor.

That voice, even though familiar, hadn't belonged to either of them. In fact, Dean knew exactly what had spoken.

The thing from the motel had followed him to the hospital.


	5. Chapter 5

"Dad—" Dean whispered, hating the fact that he sounded like a scared kid. Truth was, he was more ashamed than scared.

Dean was almost seventeen years old; he had been somewhat of a hunter since he was barely ten and he had already faced things that were a whole lot scarier than a sibilant voice in his ear and yet… he needed his dad to make this right, to make this scary thing go away.

"What is it Dean?" John prodded on when Dean took too long to finish what he was saying. Dean could hear the patience dripping away from his father's tone.

"_He can't see me, Dean."_

"No!" Dean let out as the voice spoke over his father's voice. It was lying; Dean knew it had to be lying.

"No?" John repeated, the previous anger slipping back into his voice. "No, what? No… you don't want to leave? No… it's not your fault that Child Services are now on our six and I have to leave this job unfinished? No _what_, Dean?"

"_They're just as blind to me as you are."_

Dean forced the bile down his throat. It was clear that his father was completely oblivious to both the parallel conversation that Dean was having and the intruder's presence in the room. If Dean said anything about what had happened before in the motel or what he was hearing now, his dad would probably think he was lying to cover his own ass.

Dean could only sit silent, feeling his covered eyes fill up with tears of frustration and shame that stung his burned corneas.

"Dad, maybe we could—" Sam tried to cut in, no doubt in a attempt to reason with what Dean could clearly _see_ as his father's growing exasperation.

John stood up, his left knee crackling like it had started doing ever since that poltergeist in New Harbor. "I would've thought that you'd learned your lesson better than that Dean. I ordered you to stay in that room, but you had to be stubborn and leave anyway, didn't you?"

"_Oh… you're in trouble now. Told you; you shouldn't've run."_

Dean shook his head. He had obeyed his father. Even though he had hated to be left behind while dad and Sam went hunting, Dean hadn't meant to break his promise of staying put.

"_Humm... Rebel sons... Delicious"_

"When I give you an order I expect you to follow it, Dean" John went on, his voice dropping to that deep, gravel sound that had always given Dean the shivers. "How can I trust you to help me when you can't do a damn thing I tell you, no even when it is for your own damn good?"

Dean could feel the snot coming down his nose. It was embarrassing. Even though neither his father nor Sam could see the tears his eyes stubbornly kept on producing, now they both knew he was crying.

"_Cry baby"_

"Shut up!" Dean yelled. The second the words were out of his mouth, Dean knew he'd made a terrible mistake.

"What did you just say?" John's voice had dropped to a growl, warning Dean to measure his next words very carefully.

Suddenly, his father's voice was scarier than the thing whispering in Dean's ear. Dean flinched, angry at himself for allowing the thing toying with him to bait him into further pissing his father off.

"Sorry, sir," Dean let out in a shaky whisper. It was the only words he knew his dad would allow him to say. And the truth was, Dean meant them.

John's hand fell on the edge of the metal frame of the hospital bed with such force that Dean felt the impact all the way into his broken bones. He bit his lip to stop a whimper from escaping his mouth.

"I don't know what's going on inside that head of yours, Dean, but this has got to stop," John said with a tone of finality in his voice. "I'm going to go and make some arrangements to get you out of here and then you and I... we're going to have a very serious conversation."

Dean nodded non-committably. He had absolutely no idea what he had just agreed to. The only thing that his tired brain had registered was his father saying that he was going away. It didn't matter that John would likely take not all that long to come back, probably just going away to get a wheelchair and whatever meds Dean needed to take with him.

What did matter was the fact that that thing was _in_ the room and the only one who could hear it was Dean. And his dad was going out.

Sam would probably ask to stay behind, keep Dean and that monster company while John was away. Dean couldn't allow that.

Dean needed his father to take him and Sam away from that room as fast he could. He needed Sam gone.

"Could you..." Dean started shyly. How do you beg for something that is the very last thing you want? "... could you take Sam with you?" he ventured, hoping that his shaky voice was convincing enough. "I wanna sleep a bit and—"

"Dean, I'll be quiet... I can stay," Sam cut in as soon as the first words were out of Dean's mouth.

"_Yes... do stay"_

Dean gulped. It was one thing for that monster to be tormenting him and making Dean look like a brat in John's eyes. It was another to leave Sam in there alone when Dean couldn't protect him. "No! Just get out here! I'm sick and tired of you both!"

Dean could feel the disappointment emanating from his father's figure, standing at the foot of the bed; and what was worse, he could feel the pain in Sam's sobbed intake of air.

But none of that mattered. The only important thing was to make sure that dad took Sam with him.

"Come on Sammy..." John cut through Dean's panicked thoughts. "I think your brother needs a couple of minutes to get his shit together."

Dean could hear the veiled promise in his father's words: either Dean did it, or John would do it for him.

But his dad was right, Dean realized. It was time he got his shit together. And he knew exactly how to do it.

Dean sat, trying to calm his rapid breathing and listening for his father's heavy footsteps growing dim in the distance, quietly followed by the scuffing of Sam's sneakers against the linoleum floor.

When he was sure that they were both far enough away, Dean pulled the IV from his left hand with a hiss. The plastic material fell to the floor with a soft ping! but Dean wasn't paying attention to that.

Slowly, his fingers reached up to search the bandage wrapped around his eyes for the piece of tape that was holding it together.

When he found it, Dean methodically started to unwrap the thin gauze from his face.


	6. Chapter 6

There was one thing that his father had always taught Dean without even noticing it. By example, by being who he was. It was possibly the most important lesson that John would ever pass along to his son and one that Dean kept close to his heart.

Face your fears.

Dean knew the risks he was taking by removing the bandages prematurely; two weeks, the doctor had said only four days ago. Dean guessed that almost one week would have to do.

As soon as there was nothing but one more layer of gauze around his head, Dean could already see the brightness of the hospital lights. Dean wished those lights were out.

If he hadn't been racing against the clock, in a hurry to do what needed doing before his dad returned; if his leg wasn't broken and would allow him to roam around the walls, looking for the off switch; if that thing wasn't there, waiting for Dean to come out of the dark and face it...

Then again, if life were easy, he wouldn't be Dean Winchester.

So, Dean did his best to ignore the bright lights that he knew would hurt like a bitch on his eyes and forced his trembling fingers to peel off the last parcel of protection that stood between his eyes and the world.

As soon as Dean forced his sluggish eyelids open, he felt the jolt of pain that started at the surface of his eyes and went all the way though his brain.

He was glad his father had already disconnected the monitor. He was sure his heart was racing like a horse by now. He could hear it beating wildly inside his ears.

Everything was fuzzy, still wrapped in a veil of white even though there was nothing else standing between Dean's eyes and the room. He blinked the tears away, pushing his sight to give him more details about his surroundings. Everything was unfocused and foggy.

Dean could see his broken leg, peeking out from under the white covers of the bed, grey cast making it look like twice its usual size; the room was fairly empty, except for the scarce medical equipment near his bed and one plastic chair, pushed against the wall near the door. There was a blue painting on the wall, but Dean couldn't even venture a guess on what was on it.

On the opposite wall, to Dean's right, there was a window, thankfully closed. Through the tiny slits between the binds, Dean could see the intensity of the sunlight outside. It was probably noon or something. He was glad it had stopped raining.

The monster was leaning against the corner of that wall. It was big, its furry head almost hitting the eight feet tall ceiling.

"_You should hide,"_ it advised, sibilant words escaping a hole in the middle of it's face that Dean assumed to be it's mouth.

Dean pushed himself up, sweat breaking anew on his face. Too weak to do it alone, he used both his hands to drag his broken leg out of the bed. By the time Dean managed to sit on the edge of the bed, there were black spots exploding in his line of sight and he could taste blood in his mouth.

He wasn't giving up just yet, though. He just needed a minute to catch his breath.

"_Daddy is gone... what are you going to do, cry baby?"_

Dean hopped up, ignoring the way the whole room jumped with him and kept on spinning even when Dean's feet hit the floor.

The linoleum was cold against his bare foot, the other protected by a sort of shoe-shaped plaster. Dean ventured a step forward.

He was closer now, more details coming to light. Dean could see the size of the thing's teeth, the foul breath that came out of its mouth, the length of its talons. It was like nothing Dean had ever seen before, an odd mixture of wendigo, werewolf and that thing from Aliens.

"_Come closer... you look tasty,"_ it said, snapping its sharp teeth at Dean.

Pure rage bubbled inside Dean's chest. He was done with being menaced and played with. This thing had managed to shatter whatever trust Dean had struggled to earn with his father after the Shtriga attack on Sam; it had managed to force Dean to hurt his little brother; and it seemed hell bent on proving that Dean was nothing but a scared little kid.

Without really thinking what he was doing or what the hell two bare fists were going to achieve against such a powerful monster, Dean surged forward, screaming at the top of lungs for that thing to go away.

Time seemed to slow down. He couldn't be sure if it was an illusion caused by his failing eyes, but Dean thought he saw a moment of panic in the monster's black eyes seconds before Dean moved. In the back of his mind, Dean could hear the sound of his father's voice, demanding to know what the hell Dean was doing up, and Sam's gasp of surprise.

Dean's attention, however, was on the thing in front of him. The closer Dean got, the smaller the monster looked; less solid, like Dean's proximity was hollowing it out.

Dean kept on moving, ignoring the proximity of his fast approaching father, ignoring the black spots in his vision that grew larger and larger, ignoring the pain his leg that had picked that exact moment to make itself noticed.

The monster had no more nauseating words to share with Dean, no more superiority or advantage now that it had been chased away from the dark. It made Dean smirk, tasting victory already.

The moment Dean reached the wall, the monster vanished in a cloud of dust, dissolved into non-existence and reduced to a pile of dirt on the corner of the cold floor.

After that, Dean was more than happy to pass out, knowing that the presence behind him was his father and that he would surely catch him.

* * *

"Ice cream?" Dean ventured, feeling the cold package in his hands.

"Chocolate," Sam added with a smile that could be heard in his voice. He gabbed Dean's free hand to place a spoon there. "We're sharing," he added, in case Dean hadn't realized that yet from the size of the bucket in his lap.

Dean smiled, digging in. "I vote this ithe/i best medicine ever, dad," he voiced around a mouth full of delicious cream. "If you ask me, we'd fight nothing but thought-forms from now on."

John smiled, watching his two sons pig themselves on the large bucket he had brought home.

After a busted night of trying to hunt a skinwalker that hadn't actually existed, except for in the mind of the people who'd seen it, John had started to come up with a theory of his own on what type of monster he was actually hunting.

Arriving at the motel only to feel the impact of his oldest body on the hood of the Impala had distracted him from the hunt... until the moment John had returned to his son's hospital room and had seen Dean rush head-on at an empty wall.

Thought-forms were nasty things to hunt because they could only be beaten by those who actually saw them. The green dust on the floor was the only clue John had been missing about the fact that it was truly a thought-form that had been prowling that town.

The other nasty thing about those creatures was the fact that everyone saw them as a different thing, usually the scariest monster that they could imagine. It was all about fear, because their fear was the one thing that the thought-form was after. It fed on it, fear made it stronger and all the more scarier; an endless cycle that usually ended with the person dead.

There weren't many who would face a thought-form like Dean had. Even without knowing what it was that he was fighting, Dean had advanced without fear. And, even thought the possibilities of what might've happened to his kid filled John with dread, he was insanely proud of Dean's bravery. Even if the cost had turned out too high.

There was no cure needed after being in touch with a thought-form; there certainly wasn't need for ice cream after beating one of those things.

But his kids had missed Halloween and it did wonders to John's heart to see his sons so happy and behaving like the kids that they still were.

Tomorrow it would be another day and time to return to reality.

Tomorrow he would tell Dean that his eyes had been forever damaged and that his sight was never coming back.

The end

AN: Ah! This was an interested experience, just writing with no idea where the story was going and just keep on turning the scary up. I had fun. I hope you guys had fun too :)

Beta work was done by the awesome Jackfan2. As always, any remaining mistakes are mine.


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